Hiding Behind Israel

In a speech this week, State Department counselor Philip Zelikow said the Bush administration has linked Iran and the Arab-Israel conflict, and that an international coalition against Iran depended on “progress” in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. “For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about.”

In a speech this week, State Department counselor Philip Zelikow said the Bush administration has linked Iran and the Arab-Israel conflict, and that an international coalition against Iran depended on “progress” in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. “For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about.”

This, he added, is in Israel’s interest. “If Israel, for example, is especially worried about Iran and sees it as an existential threat, then it’s strongly in the interest of Israel to want the American-led coalition to work and an active policy on the dispute with the Palestinians that begins to normalize that situation more that dampens that down is important. So it’s an essential glue that binds a lot of these problems together.”

So Israel, victimized by attacks across her borders from terrorist, non-state actors ideologically committed to its destruction, is required to engage in a “peace process” with them in order to secure the Administration’s attention to a state actor ideologically committed to its destruction and ours? And the Arab states, concerned as they should be with Persian Iran’s hegemonic designs on the region, are telling the Administration that they won’t cooperate in the defense of their own interests unless Israel makes new promises to the Palestinian “push-me-pull-you”?

The crux of this is that no one, repeat no one – not the United States, not the Arab states, not the Europeans, not Israel – no one is ready to deal directly with Iran’s quest for a nuclear capability that includes weapons. They are hiding behind the “peace process” to avoid facing their nakedness in the mirror. Israel is too small a country to cover them.

But OK. Iran is, in fact, the problem of our age, so we accept the challenge of fashioning an Israeli-Palestinian modus vivendi (not peace, not for a long time) in order to bring the planets (including Pluto) into alignment. We will save the rest of the world on the back of the “peace process.” Here is the prescription: Get the Palestinians to agree that Israel not only exists as an object to be erased as soon as possible, but that it is legitimate and permanent. Get the Palestinians to stop teaching their children (and broadcasting to their adults) that Israel is illegitimate and the highest expression of Palestinian nationalism would be to blow it up, or blow one’s self up in the attempt. Get the Palestinians to create one, just one, of the transparent institutions of government that President Bush called a prerequisite for American support for a Palestinian State.

Then you might have the conditions under which a positive form of Palestinian nationalism might emerge and produce a state that serves its people economically, socially and politically. Then you will undoubtedly find an Israeli government willing and able to support Palestinian development wholeheartedly. And the world will be one big, happy circle.

But then what will you do about Iran?